Patrick Kennedy will campaign against legalizing pot

Ex-U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, who has fought publicized battles against pain killer addiction and alcohol abuse, is set to unveil a new organization called Project SAM (“Sensible Approaches to Marijuana”) that will oppose the legalization of cannabis.

The project will be announced Wednesday in Colorado, one of two states — Washington is the other — that voted in November to legalize and tax marijuana.

“Marijuana destroys the brain and expedites psychosis: It’s just overall a very dangerous drug,” Kennedy told the Washington Post by way of a preview.

Project SAM claims that it seeks to rescue the argument against legalization from the federal government’s unsuccessful and discredited “War on Drugs.” It will preach the case for more mental health and drug treatment, allowing those arrested to avoid incarceration and chose a treatment option that will clear them of any criminal record.

“Yes, the drug war has been a failure, but let’s look at the science and let’s look at what works, and let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater,” Kennedy told Huffington Post.

Another director of Project SAM will be David Frum, the Canadian-born former George W. Bush speechwriter and conservative — albeit independent-minded — pundit.

Marijuana legalization is a cause often associated with liberals, long championed in Washington by the American Civil Liberties Union and such publications as The Stranger. Kennedy is acutely conscious of that fact, and told Huffington Post:

“The fact is people are afraid on the (political) left to look like they’re not for an alternative to incarceration and criminalization, and they’re afraid they’re not going to look sympathetic to a cancer patient.”

Kennedy, the son of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, was elected to Congress from Rhode Island in 1994 and left the House in 2010. He has since married and is father of an eight-month-old child. He has smoked marijuana but, as an asthmatic, in his words “found other ways to get high.”

In 2006, he was behind the wheel of a car that collided with a security barrier outside the U.S. Capitol. He later sought treatment for addiction to Oxycontin — a pain reliever — and acknowledged a problem with alcohol.